sloop of war with eighteen guns. After commanding her for sixteen months, in which time he took or assisted in taking more than sixty of the enemy's ships, on 7 April 1782 the General Monk, while chasing six small privateers round Cape May, got on shore, and was captured after a stout defence, in which the lieutenant and master were killed and Rogers himself severely wounded. He was shortly afterwards exchanged, and arrived in England in September, still suffering from his wound. From 1783 to 1787 he commanded the Speedy in the North Sea, for the prevention of smuggling, and from her, on 1 Dec. 1787, he was advanced to post rank.
In 1790 Rogers was flag captain to Sir John Jervis (afterwards Earl of St. Vincent) [q. v.] in the Prince. In 1793 he was appointed to the Quebec frigate, and in her, after a few months in the North Sea and off Dunkirk, he joined the fleet which went out with Jervis to the West Indies. He served with distinction at the reduction of Martinique and Guadeloupe in March and April 1794, and was afterwards sent in command of a squadron of frigates to take Cayenne. One of the frigates, however, was lost, two others parted company, and the remainder of his force was unequal to the attempt. Rogers then rejoined the admiral at a time when yellow fever was raging in the fleet, and the Quebec, having suffered severely, was sent to Halifax. By the beginning of the following year she was back in the West Indies and was under orders for home, when, at Grenada, where he was conducting the defence of the town against an insurrection of the slaves, he died of yellow fever on 24 April 1795. He was married and left issue. A monument to his memory was erected by his widow in Lymington parish church.
[Paybooks, logs, &c., in the Public Record Office. The Memoir by W. Gilpin (8vo, 1808) is an undiscriminating eulogy by a personal friend, ignorant of naval affairs.]
ROGERS, NATHANIEL (1598–1655), divine, second son of the puritan John Rogers (1572?–1636) [q. v.], by his first wife, was born at Haverhill, Essex, in 1598. He was educated at Dedham grammar school and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, which he entered as a sizar on 9 May 1614, graduating B.A. in 1617 and M.A. in 1621. For two years he was domestic chaplain to some person of rank, and then went as curate to Dr. John Barkham at Bocking, Essex. There Rogers, whose chief friends were Thomas Hooker [q. v.], the lecturer of Chelmsford, and other Essex puritans, adopted decidedly puritan views. His rector finally dismissed him for performing the burial office over 'an eminent person' without a surplice. Giles Firmin [q. v.], who calls Rogers 'a man so able and judicious in soul-work that I would have trusted my own soul with him,' describes his preaching in his 'reverend old father's' pulpit at Dedham against his father’s interpretation of faith, while the latter, 'who dearly loved him,' stood by.
On leaving Bocking he was for five years rector of Assington, Suffolk. On 1 June 1636 he sailed with his wife and family for New England, where they arrived in November. Rogers was ordained pastor of Ipswich, Massachusetts, on 20 Feb. 1638, when he succeeded Nathaniel Ward as co-pastor with John Norton (1606–1663) [q. v.] On 6 Sept. he took the oath of freedom at Ipswich, and was soon appointed a member of the synod, and one of a body deputed to reconcile a difference between the legalists and the antinomians. He died at Ipswich on 3 July 1655, aged 57.
By his wife Margaret (d. 23 Jan. 1656), daughter of Robert Crane of Coggeshall, Essex, whom he married in 1626, Rogers had issue Mary, baptized at Coggeshall on 8 Feb. 1628, married to William Hubbard [q. v.]; John (see below); and four sons (Nathaniel, Samuel, Timothy, and Ezekiel) born in Ipswich, Massachusetts. The youngest was left heir by his uncle Ezekiel Rogers [q .v.] Rogers's descendants in America at the present time are more numerous than those of any other early emigrant family. Among them was the genealogist, Colonel Joseph Lemuel Chester [q. v.]
Rogers published nothing but a letter in Latin to the House of Commons, dated 17 Dec. 1643, urging church reform; it was printed at Oxford in 1644. It contained a few lines of censure on the aspersions of the king in a number of 'Mercurius Britannicus,' to which that newspaper replied abusively on 12 Aug. 1644. He also left in manuscript a treatise in Latin in favour of congregational church government, a portion of which is printed by Mather in the 'Magnalia.'
John Rogers (1630–1684), the eldest son, baptised at Coggeshall, Essex, on 23 Jan. 1630, emigrated with his father to New England in 1636. He graduated at Harvard University in 1649 in theology and medicine, and commenced to practice the latter at Ipswich. But he afterwards became assistant to his father in the church of the same place, and abandoned medicine. He was chosen president of Harvard in April 1682, to succeed Urian Oaks [q. v.], was inaugurated in
